Today, saw the launch of the Belize Marine Spatial Plan - a process that hopes to monitor Belize's oceans. The MSP's objective is to bring together all ocean users and other stakeholders to create a comprehensive picture of what activities occur in Belize's marine areas. This will in turn help to create an inclusive and coordinated way to allocate marine spaces, and to ensure this resource can be conserved.
The overarching goal is to eventually sign the plan law that will guide the sustainable development and designate up to 30% of Belize's ocean as biodiversity protection zones.
At the ceremony, the representatives from the Ministry of the Blue Economy, the Nature Conservancy, and the Fisheries Department explained more about the MSP.
Julie Robinson, Belize Program Director, TNC
"Marine spatial planning is a process, it is a participatory process, it is stakeholder driven, and it is a way of defining how we use our ocean space. and it is addressing several objectives. First and foremost it is about protection of biodiversity so there is ecological objectives in there but there is an economic objective. So it's really about, how do we best design our ocean space to meet all these multiple objects to ensure that while we are maintaining our natural resources, we are developing it in a sustainable way that will enable for a prosperous country going forward."
Kennedy Carillo, CEO, Ministry of Blue Economy
"The Belize Sustainable Ocean Plan is an integral part of our process of ensuring that the Blue Economy policy and strategy of our country will be inclusive, that it will not only focus on a conservation aspect but also how do we make the smartest decisions in terms of the sustainable and responsible use of our Marine space as well as our resources. It is extremely important for us to highlight that this must be a consultative process that engages all the different sectors, in particularly, the role of those sectors that depend and have depended on the ocean for many years, we're speaking about the fishing communities, there must be an integral part, as well as, of course, ensuring that at every single step, we are informing the people of Belize because we are the owners of this space and we must ensure that whatever decisions are being made will impact our lives positively."
Beverly Wade, Director of Fisheries
"So what we want is that next year, a fisherman can still be out there and have a reasonable livelihood from fishing, what we want is that we continue to have natural assets that support our eco tourism sector and we also want that the overall contribution of important natural resources to climate resiliency is maintain as a country because it is important for our survival."
Andre Perez, Minister of Blue Economy
"We as a country have to lead, and it's high time that we as a country stop just saying if other countries are doing it, we need to do it. We are this point in time by launching the MSP, it makes us create history that we are going through uncharted waters and it is going to work for us. We are the second country to launch this MSP and I'm told that of course Barbados is following it as well. I'm sure other countries are following and they will be looking at us to seek information which we will be more than willing to share with them, so it is leading the way and puts us on the map as Belize bring innovative."
Wade also explained there is a fund of 4 million US dollars set up to achieve this process and various milestones they have set.
